Exmouth Town Council oppose plan for temporary attractions on the form Fun Park site which is earmarked for redevelopment under phase three of the Exmouth regeneration scheme.

Town councillors have again refused to support an application for temporary attractions on Exmouth seafront.

Planning committee members decided not to support the proposal to install pop-up food outlets and a large to screen to show live sport, such as World Cup football matches, at the former fun park site in Queen’s Drive.

If given the go-ahead, East Devon District Council’s (EDDC) plan could also see the former boating lake filled in for a hard or soft seating area and a fenced-off children’s play zone created.

The current proposal is a full application and town councillors have suggested that it should be reverted to an outline plan. They say it could progress to a full proposal, with more detail, later.

The amended plans now include a letter intended to dispel previous objections over the lack of information in the application and the permanent infilling of the boating lake.

EDDC says the lack of detail was due to a ‘tight timescale’ and there is no ‘specific engineering solution’ for how the infilling will take place.

Objecting to the installation of the big screen, Nick Hookway, chairman of campaign group Save Exmouth Seafront, pointed out that an extensive environmental monitoring programme had previously been recommended for the site.

He said: “I think that the presence of a large number of people on that site will be highly damaging to that site itself.

“Will this present application prevent damage to the site or merely get the public to do the council’s work?

“Will this application have the same environmental mitigation conditions that the reserve matters application had?”

Exmouth Town Council Planning Committee members voted to oppose the amended proposals, saying the blueprint has not answered their original concerns and the plan should come back as an outline application.

In the additional information, EDDC says it wants the application to be decided on by its development management committee in March.

Councillor Bill Nash said: “March is plenty of time for this application to come back in to this committee as an outline application, which I think would be considered properly and probably be acceptable.”